Fated to Die: Romantic Fatalism and the Twink (Selections)
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The almost spiritual contemplation of male beauty is a persistent theme in Western literature and one that is often tied closely with death. Consider the word fey which today is mostly used to describe someone as slightly efeminate, whimiscal or delicate. A more exact definition means either “fated to die” or “appearing under a spell.” Now consider the plot of Death in Venice where Aschenbach, a widowed writer, becomes obsessed with the beauty of Tadzio, an adolscent boy he sees on vacation. While never even speaking to the boy (notice the lack of actual engagement), the protagonist finds his beauty increasingly rapturous. Could it be that Tadzio is actually representative of beauty itself, rather than a simple physical desire? As Aschenbach’s obsession increases, he finds himself becoming increasingly ill. He dies shortly after a brief visual acknowledgement by Tadzio on the beach.
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In other representations, it is the beautiful male himself who is destined for tragedy. Cather’s Paul’s Case features a teenaged protagonist who elicits the usual euphemisms: troubled, overly concerned with beauty, ambitious, desirous of power and glamour, elitist, ill of health. In Cather’s short story, Paul runs away from home and adopts a stylish and wealthy persona after stealing one thousand dollars from his employer. Upon learning that his crime has been discovered and his father is in transit to bring him home, he commits suicide by jumping in front of a train. His refusal to live a mundane existence, the immediatism of his desires, and his blind overvaluing of aesthetic beauty all conspire in a determinist narrative where flight from the material world is the only option.
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It should be noted that the romantic fatalism of which the fey principle is an example, is separate from the sexuality imbued in the adolescent nihilism of Dennis Cooper and Larry Clark. The works of Cooper and Clark rather reflect a negative liberty which produces self destruction, experimentation, amorality and a complete denial of body ownership. Wether this is purely a guilt mechanism for a section of the bohemian class which wants to party with young and attractive wastrels, drug addicts and criminals or a simple tribute to Genet, it does not fall under the rubric of the thesis presented. The realization of the fey relates to the gap between the real and the ideal. It is about the impossibility of living the aesthete narrative, with specific relation to certain classical archetypes of male beauty.
